I talked to one of the pilots scheduled to operate the flight yesterday before i posted. The official handover is 15th march but Engineering need to do a couple of days work before the handover.
The secondary issue is it has to land from the North, due to some sort of obstruction so if they landed from the South it would shorten the length of the runway, down from approx 1800m to 1300m. I think that the one into Longreach stopped in just over 1000m with heavy braking, quoted nearly put the pilots thru the window :D:D
He said it would likely be between 8th and 11th, and dependent on wind conditions. Length of runway is not a problem at 1800 but its 15m narrower than International wide body runways so I assume you wouldn't want to be fighting a heavy cross wind.
Once I hear the initial target day I will post as I plan in being there. But it may get cancelled on the day due to wind conditions. I assume media will be all over it as well, so I am sure we will get better information closer to the day.
